White Eyed, but not Innocent
by Camaxtli
Summary: Eight years after the chunnin exams Deidara falls in love while Hinata makes him blow stuff up. Same timeline as Blood In The Water.


Right about here, I think." I'm beautiful and I know it. I'm wearing a long tight black sheath, the neck dipping to my navel and the sides slit up my long legs to the string of my thong. My skirt is just long enough that the bottom should be spattered with mud, but it's spotless, a skill that took months to perfect. My lips are full and touched with pale ice-blue lipstick that sets off my pearl-white skin and my long lilac hair. I'm holding a small fan, beautifully lacquered with the image of a crimson mooning peaking over brooding scarlet clouds. I'm causing a few traffic jams just walking down the street.

I'm wearing a scarlet camisole that treads the line in between mesh and lace, managing to look purely decorative while still being quite useful. It peeks out just enough to be noticed. My stockings, the straps leading into realms only fantasized by most, are much the same, though more visible. The corsage is tight as my own skin and cut with a number of small slits giving mouth-watering flashes of pale flesh. All in all, not one watcher would guess that I'm better armed than most legions and able to access any of it at a moments notice. Look, but don't touch.

The slits lead to subtle knives and miniature scrolls, written expressly for me by a calligrapher famous for working in the microscopic. The fabric is riddled with a selection of small stiff needles, carefully organized and placed to give me a choice of poisons and tips. The charming buckles and the sexy straps are garrotes, my red jade bracelets hard enough to block swords, and my fan capable of blowing gale-force winds in an emergency.

My boots don't fit. The rest of me looks like a sexy porcelain doll, but the boots are heavy black leather. Steel tipped, iron heeled, and spiked soles just for fun. Big polished brass buckles too. It makes them jump, why I wear them. Nobody fucks with me when I wear these boots.

The reason I'm all dolled up like this is because we aren't supposed to be here, and so our Akatsuki cloaks, which are far more famous than they were eight years ago, attract too much attention of the wrong kind. I, as in myself, don't need to avoid attention because I'm not DOING anything, just looking. If I still had to do the bulgy-vein thing like the rest of my clan I suppose that I would have to hide, but I don't. It turns out that was caused by Hyuuga blood pressure, not Hyuuga blood-lines. Leaving the clan did WONDERS for that.

"What? We won't get no shrapnel here, un. Not just with shaped charges. We should drop it on the other side of the wall. Un." Deidara has to do stuff, so he is hiding. He looks like a typical tourist, wearing shorts- not short enough, sadly- and a button-down shirt that looks floral. If anyone had actually looked at him they'd notice that the "flowers" are actually explosions and that most of them include blood and guts. The gut explosions are eerily accurate. Deidara spent ages making that shirt. His hair has been slicked back, blackened, and his usual make-up removed, so he seems a lot manlier.

"That is my intention. Were you asleep during the briefing? We are expected to minimize casualties." All of his disguises are useless. I like to be looked at and people like to look at me. Most don't even notice that he's there. The men want me and the women want to look like me, and I use both. A ninja, one of the Stone chunnin who have been hired to protect this town, approaches on his patrol. I stretch and make a little circle with my hips, sending him blindly into a power pole. My advice: Watch the path, not the girls.

"I could fix it so that it goes in low, un... Only the legs. They have a hospital here. The stone will use their medic-nins. They'll want to at least LOOK useful, un" We're here because Red Moon has claimed this territory, and neither Stone nor the villages agree. We're good neighbors, usually. We train good ninja, we don't care if their parents are civvies, and we keep the missing-nin population almost non-existent. The Akatsuki elite, of whom I am a proud member of, may be a collection of famous criminal butchers and monsters, with the exception this one cute kin-killer who had excellent and understandable reasons for what she did, but we neither slaughter villages or eat babies. Well, not anymore, at least. Kisame says that he ate a baby once, but I'm not sure that I believe him. He's got a weird sense of humor.

"Injuries are casualties, Deidara. We are here for property damage ONLY. We ARE going to warn them before we detonate and we ARE going to come out of this smelling like roses. Not corpses. Roses." Now, we could be like Leaf and go around being boy/girlscouts, or we could be like Mist and slaughter everyone who doesn't submit. I for one have no taste for being a girlscout. I got enough of it in Konoha. They treat you like shit, like the hired help you are. I didn't leave the clan and the village just so that I can get my face smeared in the mud. Besides, I don't think that Deidara or Itachi know what work is. Itachi, that genius little brat, joined ANBU before he was old enough for a genin team. Deidara… Is Deidara. Deidara just don't do dat. As for the Mist route, we don't need to make our PR problems worse.

"If they see others being cut down at the knees they'll run faster. If they're lying on their bellies they avoid all the burning bits, un." Itachi is a sweetheart, though. Not like Deidara. He couldn't bear to kill his cute little brother even though he wanted to destroy the entire clan for its crimes, whatever those were. He did give that cruel and stupid little speech, but I don't think he can be entirely blamed for that. Everyone makes mistakes. Plus, his family was almost as fucked up as mine, though a bit subtler about it, and he's only really had working relationships in his life. He's cutely shy and has no social skills at all.

"If they see people being cut down at the knees they will run, not stopping for anything, spreading tales of the horrible monstrous Akatsuki killing thousands of people, torturing and crippling them slowly to savor their painful demise. Those that we don't kill directly will crush each other in the stampede, which we will also be blamed for. I have told you all of this before, Deidara." Deidara is an artist. He works in explosions. He thinks that the pinnacle of art is blowing people up. Humans are complicated things, so the paths of the parts are even more complex. It's a testament to his genius every time he positions and times it just right, turning a blood splatter into a flower or something. I've been trying to persuade him otherwise. 

"It compromises my artistic principles! We don't NEED this village, un. That is why we're making an example out of it." Buildings are beautiful and blowing them up is even prettier. I can show you the fracture points, keystones, important pillars, all that jazz. He knows exactly what to do once I tell him. Between the two of us we can take down a mansion and not have one stone bounce off its grounds. Is it better to have a thousand average works and a one or two really great ones or is it better to have just a hundred great ones? We disagree.

"They fear us already. They fear us TOO much. It's not that they don't trust our ability; it's that they don't trust our mercy. They KNOW that we can kill them all; they hired the stone-nin because they had the money and a slim chance is better than none. We need to prove that we will be harsh when forced, but can still be merciful. They refused to pay our taxes and hired protection against us; we don't need to kill them, just to show that the protection is useless and that they'll lose the wealth either way." Deidara grumbles, but finally places the bomb where I told him to. It looks like a bee. It flaps its wings like a bee. I've painted it bee-colored. It looks perfectly natural there, enough that even when they know that we've planted bombs they won't be able to find it. We wander around the building, placing bombs, and then stroll off to the next target.

"I don't like this, unn." By Goku's mighty rod, he's so annoying. I should have brought Itachi. Itachi likes me. Itachi is shy around me. Itachi is good at burning things. With a properly planned fire we could have taken out the entire town and not scorched a baby's bottom. Even if Itachi was annoying, I could blackmail him into silence. I know the reason he's threatened to kill anyone who enters his chambers is to hide his kitten. Plus, Itachi has a nicer bum; it's even better than Sasuke's was.

"What now?" If I ask, I get to shut him up. He will whine forever if I don't ask. I don't want to know. I really don't. I asked.

"This is a pottery, un." Buddha's bouncing balls.

"Yes, it's on the list. It's a big export. He's supposed to be a master." Shut up. Blow the damn thing up. Take the hint.

"She." What? 

"What?" Oh god, is it?..

"She, it's owned by a woman, un. She is a master of porcelain. Go inside, look at it." He's complimenting another artist. He's only ever complimented Sasori. This may be bad.

"So steal it." I'm a genius.

"What?" His turn.

"If you like the porcelain, steal it. It is just going to be destroyed, so it is no loss to her. Just walk in, knock her out, and steal it all." I reach down under my dress and start pulling out one of my blank storage scrolls. The dress is designed not to show anything I'm carrying, so I kinda have to stroke it out. It's very tightly packed. I guess it looks like I'm doing something entirely different because there are several traffic accidents.

"But... Un, shes a master potter. It'd be wrong to destroy her kiln. That's a nice piece of work, un." He crushing the scroll in his hands, visibly nervous. We've gone into the store and he's making gestures at someone I assume is her, all wrapped up in all leather, probably the potter. With my eyes I can see that she's pretty enough, but nothing special.

"Yours is better, correct?" He blinks, suddenly wary. He's got the scroll in a death-grip.

"Un..." He's glancing at her, shuffling away from me. It is excellent porcelain, he's right. It'd be a shame to destroy it. Thin as paper, you can almost see through it. Probably priceless. Crying shame.

"So steal her as well and let her use your kiln. We finish up our task, and before we go we come back and fetch her and her work. You will have to obey a few ground rules, of course. No murder, no raping her unless she asks for it specifically, and you have to hunt her food. Well, there would be quite a few more, but those are the basics." He's outright gaping at me now. He grabs me by the arm and drags me out of the building.

"She's a _master potter!_ She's more than just a pet! Un, you can't just say 'feed it and clean up after it and you can keep it', un. She deserves, its…" His angry whispers splutter into silence. 'She deserves better than that.' I was right. He has a crush.

"You've got a crush." Blessed silence. He's absolutely speechless. The blush makes him look even more like a girl than usual. I want to pinch his cheek, but that'd just be spiteful so I refrain. Besides, he'd blast me to bits. I know how far I can push them.

"I don't have a _crush._ Un, I'm thirty years old." He's embarrassed and offended; his voice frost and dignity. Even the tips of his ears blush. My ass he doesn't have a crush.

"Oh, yes, because people your age don't get crushes. How could I have forgotten? I'm sure that you simply respect her artistic abilities." He gives a firm nod then catches my sarcasm. "You really are cute." Time to stop, I think. His hands are making little biting motions. I'll persuade him, though. He'll get all angsty if he kills her, guaranteed.

"Un, we should get on with the job. And as I was SAYING, we shouldn't destroy the pottery because of the shrapnel. It would, un, kill too many people and we're not supposed to kill too many people." I 'm too smart to laugh. I'm not suicidal enough to laugh. I'm coughing on the dust, that's it. He pats me on the back, proving he's clueless. Artists. Some creep is looking down my dress, so I kick him in the balls. They get to look at what I want them to look at, no more, no less. Deidara laughs.

"I never knew you were a fan of revisionist history, Deidara." He gives me a blank look.

"What? Un, what do you mean?" He doesn't get it.

"Nothing, simple nonsense. When we are finished we can simply knock her out and leave her in the woods. We can even leave her her stock if you like. You surely would not take such beauty from the world?" I work on him for the last two buildings, leading him through his rationalizations. He's agreed fully by the time that we leave. People are so easy to manipulate when you're giving them what they want. He sends out a number of snakelike streamers of clay and we go have lunch.

Thai food. It's very good. The "snakes" swell up into "clouds", which he uses for sky-writing. You can send out a message pretty damn well if you use letters a hundred feet long. Nothing interesting, just a warning that the important bits of the town are going to blow up and to get the hell out of town. He gives a time limit of two hours, bit of a pinch but not too bad, and we wander around shopping for a while. It's amazing what deals you can get if you're willing to haggle during an evacuation. Pretty fun too.

At the thirty minute mark he blows up half of the skywriting- pretty, good as fireworks- and my haggling turns into outright looting. It's even more fun, especially when we run into a few gangs of rival looters. At fifteen minutes we go back to the potters, and lo and behold, she's still there. I knock her out- Deidara can't do nonfatal- and tell him that she'll wake up in two hours. She'll wake up in an hour. I get to snag all of her stuff because she fought off the other looters. A big ball of hardened clay does a lot of damage if it hits someone in the head. We scoot at five minutes.

We watch from atop a nearby hill. It looks very nice, I added a few targets so that it looks like a sickle moon. We're scheduled to go present the revised "treaty" an hour and a half after the strikes, we left the city hall for the village council to hurry back to. I persuade him to make "me" a clay rose while he's waiting, a nonexplosive one. Asking for little changes and more detail occupies him while we wait. It's more perfect than a real one would be. When she wakes up, he gives her the rose, as planned. Love at first sight. Mission accomplished. He makes me give her the stuff that I looted telling her I saved it for her. Maybe he even believes it. Then she finds out that we're Akatsuki and "terrorists." I explain that he's an artist and I'm "creatively diplomatic." She is not impressed.

Love is fleeting.

He gets all mopey despite my hard work, but I manage to snag the storage scroll and replace it with a blank one when nobody is looking. He ends up killing two Sand jounin and the mayor, but they sign the treaty. We go home.

I manage to kidnap Itachi's kitten without anyone noticing. I tell him to "make me an offer" to get her back, I even take a deep breath and points my tits at him, but he still doesn't try to sleep with me. Too shy. Or an idiot. Or gay. I don't think he's gay. Anyway, life goes on. Then Kisame and I run into Ino. 

Things start to get interesting.


End file.
